The Icons - Pride

I truly believe that fashion saved my life. In my early teenage years, clothes were merely another means of hiding and pretending to be someone I wasn’t. Even when I had finally reckoned with my own queerness and was ready to embrace it fully, I still allowed myself to be restricted by arbitrary binaries of dressing out of fear of reinforcing stereotypes and doing some sort of (imagined) harm to my community's struggle for acceptance. It was only once I stepped away from the straight gaze and embraced the camp, princely, and gender-nonconformist did I truly blossom. I realised that I did not have to shy away from the things that made me different. Artifice, adornment, and transformation helped me to become myself. Queer fashion offered me, both then and now, armour - an embodiment of my confidence and brightness, even on my worst days.

So, what is queer fashion? Is queer fashion simply fashion made by queer people? Is it fashion that 'looks queer' - and if so what does queer look like? Do we queer the fashion or does the fashion queer us? The answers to these questions form a rich constellation of resistance, non-conformity, and aesthetic joy - a history of our community's desire to live and express ourselves and our truths without restriction, often at great personal cost. 

Queer style started influencing the fashion world in a mainstream way in the late 20th-century. Modern queer aesthetics and forms of fashion popular in the various subcultures of the LGBTQ+ community found greater visibility and thrived in the decades after the gay liberation movement that began in the ‘60s. Mainstream fashion across the board has been shaped by queer giants across the last few decades such as the late Yves Saint Laurent, Thierry Mugler and Alexander McQueen. In 1966, Yves, with his 'Le Smoking' — a tuxedo suit designed specifically for women — injected a fresh and daring androgyny that would redefine the course of modern fashion, and further break down the rigid binaries that the industry had perpetuated. Decades later, McQueen cast aside notions that womenswear must be polished or dainty, creating looks that were strong and even ferocious. "I want people to be afraid of the women ,” he once said. The archetypes and the fantasies they invented still dominate contemporary fashion and moodboards everywhere, laying the groundwork for many a shining, contemporary queer designer. But the real origins of queer style starts much earlier.

A more thorough history begins perhaps with the increasingly outmoded term and concept: cross-dressing. For as long as we have had gendered, binary fashion that prescribes fixed and enduring truths about who we are and consequently how we must dress, the LGBTQ+ community has resisted - body and will. In her book 'The Transgender Issue', author and commentator Shon Faye writes that this kind of gender “deviance” or any transgressions of traditional gender norms were punishable as early as the seventh to fifth centuries BCE. “That this 'deviation' needed legislating against suggests that crossdressing was prevalent enough to generate concern amongst lawmakers,” writes Faye. Essentially, queer fashion has been around a long time. In 1709, investigative journalist Ned Ward wrote of 'molly houses' — 18th and 19th-century establishments where gay men, who called themselves 'mollies', would meet. These men would reportedly imitate “all the little Vanities that Custom has reconcil'd to the Female Sex", wearing women’s clothing, from women’s night gowns to period hats. The baroque, meticulous and often effete stylings of the 'Dandy' or the 'Fop' of the same era were mocked precisely for the same reason: they threatened and challenged the rigid status quo.  

Although fashion and queer culture have always been intertwined, today they’re more enmeshed than ever. The buzzy rise of drag queens such as Violet Chachki, Miss Fame, and Symone as fashion royalty is evidence of our evolving and radically changed world. Harry Styles, one of the most popular mainstream pop stars on the planet, is famed for his rejection and subversion of gendered fashion norms - that he often wears pearls and dresses makes him more relevant and loved. We now have a growing offering of fashion for, by, and of queer people. We think of brands and designers with implicit or explicit origins in our multi-hyphenate subcultures. Take Spanish label Alled Martinez whose collections have referenced the handkerchief code - a discreet way of denoting sexual preferences first popularised by the LGBTQ+ community in the 70s - while Richard Quinn's latex, leather and BDSM-inspired offerings draw upon the aesthetics of underground queer subcultures. Designers including Hana Quist, Saul Nash, Charles Jeffrey, Jarmide, The Blonds and countless others belong to a bright wave of LGBTQ+ designers influencing fashion with their own queer perspectives. Queerness has no fixed or designated look, instead it rallies against the gendered fashion codes forced upon us. It offers a sexy alternative to conformity. 

Fashion is an arena of expression, where we can attempt to redress the gap between who we know ourselves to be, and who the world demands us to be. Clothes are an outward expression of our inner truth, a tool the LGBTQ+ community have harnessed because we’ve had to. Queer people have often treated fashion as resistance and rebellion to a world that teaches us shame and disappear ourselves. We have taken marginalisation and turned it into a creative, joyful statement. You’re welcome.